O the cruel, unhappy fate of women! These lines are assigned to the Chorus in the print edition.What arts, what arguments have we, once we have made a slip, to loose by craftFollowing Nauck’s reading δόλοις. If λόγου be retained, it would seem to mean loose the tight hold a word can keep on us i.e. the threat of Hippolytus; but it is doubtful if the Greek will bear this. the tight-drawn knot? I have met my deserts. O earth, O light of day! How can I escape the stroke of fate? How my pangs conceal, kind friends? What god will appear to help me, what mortal to take my part or help me in unrighteousness? The present calamity of my life admits of no escape. Most hapless I of all my sex!ChorusAlas, alas! the deed is done, thy servant’s schemes have gone awry, my queen, and all is lost.PhaedraAccursed woman! traitress to thy friends! How hast thou ruined me! May Zeus, my ancestor, smite thee with his fiery bolt and uproot thee from thy place. Did I not foresee thy purpose, did I not bid thee keep silence on the very matter which is now my shame? But thou wouldst not be still; wherefore my fair name will not go with me to the tomb. But now I must another scheme devise. Yon youth, in the keenness of his fury, will tell his father of my sin, and the aged Pittheus of my state, and fill the world with stories to my shame. Perdition seize thee and every meddling fool who by dishonest means would serve unwilling friends!NurseMistress, thou may’st condemn the mischief I have done, for sorrow’s sting o’ermasters thy judgment; yet can I answer thee in face of this, if thou wilt hear. ’Twas I who nurtured thee; I love thee still; but in my search for medicine to cure thy sickness I found what least I sought. Had I but succeeded, I had been counted wise, for the credit we get for wisdom is measured by our success.PhaedraIs it just, is it any satisfaction to me, that thou shouldst wound me first, then bandyσυγχωρεῖν, so Liddell and Scott, but it seems a doubtful usage, and Nauck suspects the word. words with me?NurseWe dwell on this too long; I was not wise, I own; but there are yet ways of escape from the trouble, my child.PhaedraBe dumb henceforth; evil was thy first advice to me, evil too thy attempted scheme. Begone and leave me, look to thyself; I will my own fortunes for the best arrange. (Exit Nurse). Ye noble daughters of Troezen, grant me the only boon I crave; in silence bury what ye here have heard.ChorusBy majestic Artemis, child of Zeus, I swear I will never divulge aught of thy sorrows.Phaedra’Tis well. But I, with all my thought,The reading προστρέπουσ’ offers no clear meaning; of the various suggestions Monk’s προσκοποῦσ’ is the simplest. can but one way discover out of this calamity, that so I may secure my children’s honour, and find myself some help as matters stand. For never, never will I bring shame upon my Cretan home, nor will I, to save one poor life, face Theseus after my disgrace.ChorusArt thou bent then on some cureless woe?PhaedraOn death; the means thereto must I devise myself.ChorusHush!PhaedraDo thou at least advise me well. For this very day shall I gladden Cypris, my destroyer, by yielding up my life, and shall own myself vanquished by cruel love. Yet shall my dying be another’s curse, that he may learn not to exult at my misfortunes; but when he comes to share the self-same plague with me, he will take a lesson in wisdom.

ChorusO to be nestling ’neath some pathless cavern, there by god’s creating hand to grow into a bird amid the winged tribes! Away would I soar to Adrians wave-beat shore and to the waters of Eridanus; where a father’s hapless daughtersThe daughters of Helios and Clymene are represented as weeping for Phaethon their brother on the banks of Eridanus (Po). Ovid Metam. v. 340 sqq. says the sun turned their tears into amber, and they themselves became poplars on the river-bank. in their grief for Phaethon distil into the glooming flood the amber brilliance of their tears.

ChorusAnd to the apple-bearing strand of those minstrels in the west I then would come, where ocean’s lord no more to sailors grants a passage o’er the deep dark main, finding there the heaven’s holy bound, upheld by Atlas, where water from ambrosial founts wells up beside the couch of Zeus inside his halls, and holy earth, the bounteous mother, causes joy to spring in heavenly breasts.

ChorusO white-winged bark, that o’er the booming ocean-wave didst bring